Theory Seminar: Electronvolt sterile neutrinos: a critical appraisal

Abstract:In this talk I review the situation of the short baseline neutrino oscillation anomalies that are still unexplained. The LSND, MiniBooNE, reactor and gallium anomalies will be described and discussed. A critical view of the anomalies in terms of neutrino oscillations will be given. The problem with cosmology will be considered, together with terrestrial oscillation and non-oscillation experiments that can help elucidate this puzzle.

Theory Seminar: Some new ideas on dark matter decay

Abstract:I will explore two different scenarios to account for the long lifetime of dark matter. In the first one, I will assume that dark matter is stable when coupled to the SM but can proceed through (non-minimal) interactions to gravity. Based on current observations, I will show that even this ‘gravitational portal’ to dark matter decay is rather constrained. In the second scenario, I will present an extension of the SM where the dark matter candidate can be absolutely stable without the aid of ad hoc additional symmetries.

Theory Seminar: Disambiguating the Cosmological Dark Sector

Abstract:Our observations of dark matter and dark energy are, at least so far, based purely on their effect on their combined effect on the geometry of the universe and therefore ambiguous in a fundamental way. As we progress toward building ever more precise maps of the universe, it will become increasingly important to understand what we can measure definitely, in a model-independent manner and what we can only say on the assumption of a model.
I will discuss how to construct such model-independent observables, and the fundamental limits to our knowledge that can only be broken by employing parameterisations resulting from particular models. I will discuss how to approach parametrising our ignorance in a minimal yet consistent and physical manner and ask to what extent such modelling can actually account for anomalies we are beginning to see in cosmological data.

The PAU camera is now fully commissioned and ready to be offered as a visitor instrument

The PAU Camera saw first light in June 2015 and has successfully completed two observation periods in November 2015 and April 2016, starting its Science Survey programme. Over 5000 science exposures have been taken, covering about 1.5 deg2 of the sky using the full set of 40 narrow band filters and up to 5 deg2 with a subset of them. This area is equivalent to about 500 deg2 area with single band and single exposures taken in 9 nights of good weather. The current PAU dataset has been reduced, calibrated and matched to deeper overlapping samples in about 1 day of real time. The result is about 75000 complete PAU low resolution spectra to iAB<23mag. The data reduction resulted in over 5 Terabytes and 71 million object measurements and was performed in record time using the PIC infrastructure and a preliminary PAUcam community pipeline. The figure shows an example comparison of some PAU calibrated spectra (taken in April 2016) with public galaxy and star SDSS spectra, with no adjustments.

The PAU Survey aims to cover 100 deg2 providing spectral information in fields where deep weak gravitational lensing data are available. This will result in new spectra for several million galaxies up to iAB<23 mag. Other science studies can be done with this camera which has the capability to determining SED for all objects in a large field of view.

PAUcam can also be used for Broad Band imaging with ugrizY on 18 4Kx2K red-sensitive fully depleted CCD's of 15 μm with a ~1 deg2 FoV (with vignetting outside the central 40 arcmin diameter).

The PAUcam system has also evolved to become more user friendly and able to be operated by other astronomers from the ING community. With the commissioning of the Autoguider at the beginning of April 2016 the camera is now fully commissioned.

Detailed information on the camera performance and how to prepare for observation periods with PAUCam can be found at pausurvery.org.

International PhD Fellowship Program

Fellowships for 2016 at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST)

The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST) is a multidisciplinary research institute formed by six of the top research centers in Barcelona.

The BIST community is formed by the following centers: the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG); the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO); the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ); the Catalan Institute for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2); the High Energy Physics Institute (IFAE); and the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona).

BIST is offering fellowships for 10 talented graduates with backgrounds in biology, chemistry, pharmacy, physics, engineering or computer sciences to pursue a PhD degree at one of the BIST centers. BIST offers an exciting international and collaborative scientific environment with a broad range of research disciplines, supported by cutting-edge core facilities. Our PhD students have access to a comprehensive offer of technical courses, personal skills training, and career development.

Javier Montejo receives the ATLAS Thesis Award

Javier Montejo, now a CERN fellow, has received the ATLAS Thesis award for his thesis done at IFAE under the supervision of Aurelio Juste. Javier is the first student at IFAE that has been awarded with this prize.

The title of his work is: "Search for new physics in ttbar final states with additional heavy-flavor jets with the ATLAS detector" and he defended it on June 2015. In a few words, Javier's dissertation presents three analyses that address the instability of the Higgs mass from different perspectives and that constitute the most sensitive searches to date in their respective channels. He has also contributed to the performance of the ATLAS hadronic calorimeter.

The ATLAS Thesis Awards started in 2010 and recognize young postdoctoral candidates who have contributed to the experiment in all areas, in the context of a PhD thesis. A committee judges candidates on their work in all areas of ATLAS. Only 5 awards are given every year among more than 100 theses.

The ATLAS Thesis Prize Awardees received their recognition during the last ATLAS Week.

Also during the ATLAS week, Silvia Fracchia, PhD student at the IFAE-ATLAS group, received a recognition for the ATLAS PhD Grant she was awarded on 2014.